[Audio Length: 0:19:10] RECORDING COMMENCES:
Rajka Hayden: I have been washing my dry clean only clothes
for about four years and it's been working great for me.
Up until that point, I probably went to the dry cleaners once a week, at least, I spent
a ton of money and I really was never all that happy with how they turned out.
I tried to find really good dry cleaners, but I didn't like the way things smelled
when they came back, the way they felt, and more importantly, a lot of my vintage and
nicer resale pieces got ruined at the dry cleaners.
If you love clothes like I do, nobody can take better care of your clothes but you,
yourself, it's kind of like your kids.
The reason that I am able to do this is because of one of my favorite brands which is The
Laundress.
I have pretty much every product that they make.
This is a line of laundry and house cleaning detergents and tools.
Their website is amazing.
It has all of these tutorials on exactly how to do all of this.
Now, I want to say that I am not being paid to do this video by Laundress.
I pay for the products full price, just like everybody else, I'm just a huge fan and
would love to have people try it, if you're spending a lot of money on dry cleaning.
I used to spend a lot of money, like I said, on dry cleaning.
To first get all of their products, is a little bit of an investment, I will say, I bought
them over the years, but it pays for itself many times over if you do this for a number
of years.
So, today I've been accumulating, I have this big bag, I like to do it in big blocks
instead of on offs.
I have a bag here and I'll show you all what's in here, of clothes that normally
I would take and I think most people would take to the dry cleaner, and I'm actually
going to show you how I'm going to do this.
Before we get into that, thank you so much for watching this video.
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I'm going to open up my bag and show you what I have in here.
I'll start by saying, I have a little bit of angst doing this honestly.
There are quite a few pieces in here that I have already washed before and they're
going to be fine, I already know that.
But, there are a couple of new pieces in here, I'm a little bit nervous.
I thought about taking them to the dry cleaners, but they're very intricate and I'm just
afraid that -- I think I'm going to do a better job, it may not 100% work, you'll
be real time seeing.
The first thing is a Dior knit dress that I love and I've had for many years.
It's net with this fabric inside of it.
I have washed this before, so I know it's going to come out great.
The first time I did it was I like, "Oh, is this really going to work out?"
It works out really well.
We're going to put that actually in the washing machine with a bunch of other knit
sweaters.
One of my husband's favorite sweaters.
I think I have quite a few.
This one has some cashmere in it and a couple of other things like that, sweaters.
We are going to put these into the washing machine and you'll see that in just a minute.
The two new pieces that I'm a little worried about.
This is one.
This is an incredible 1970s caftan that I got.
It's in great shape.
You'll see it has this ribbon and it has little beads and things like that.
I'm afraid that if I took this to the dry cleaner these would come out just really messed
up.
And, I have a really great dry cleaner, we're going to do an episode with him, but still,
I'm afraid of that.
I'm also curious, I'm hoping none of this is going to run, but we are going to hand
wash this piece and I'll show you and walk you through that.
The other one that I haven't washed before and that's new to me, is this kimono, another
kimono, that I got resale.
This is silk.
It's quite old.
I think that this is going to be fine, but it has these little buttons.
Silk actually washes well, it's just going to be steaming this might be a little bit
hard.
Again, it's very delicate, I've already had to repair it a couple of times, so we
are going to hand wash that.
The first thing to do with all of the pieces is to see if you have any stains and treat
those with the stain solution.
There's a tiny stain here on the caftan and I'm just going to go like this and put
some of that on there.
Use the stain brush, the Laundress Stain Brush.
I'm just going to kind of get that in there.
[music] I can already see that that stain is pretty much gone.
So, I will do that with all of these clothes.
Everything is going to get turned inside out.
Before we do the hand wash pieces, I'm going to get these started in the actual washing
machine.
Here's that Dior dress.
It's inside out, like everything else is here right now.
I'm going to take it and put it in this nice mesh bag.
This is going to keep it very safe, so that no other knit will get on it and also if there's
buttons or anything, nothing will mess this up.
You put them in these bags and somehow it still gets clean.
I don't know, I learned that on the website, but it works.
Then, the only other one I'm going to put into one of these mesh bags, is this little
sweater that has buttons and is a little bit more delicate.
The rest of these knits I'm just going to keep without a bag and put them in together,
I've washed all of these before and they come out great.
Knits, Cashmere all of them.
Some of these, in the past I've done by hand, which is probably a good idea too, but
I've worn these now a lot, so I'm just going to throw these all into the wash machine.
I'll take you over there.
Here we're using the wool and cashmere shampoo.
This is the first product I bought and tried out.
The best thing ever.
It smells great and works incredibly well.
I'm going to put it on the delicate cycle.
It will be a little bit noisy here for a minute.
We're going to go on delicate.
While it's filling up, I'm going to take eight capfuls of this, I don't have an HE,
it bothers me, I need a better washing, but I don't have an HE washer, so I'm going
to put eight capfuls of this wool and cashmere shampoo.
[music] It is getting good and sudsy in there, I don't know if you can see that.
Next, just throwing these things in, just the way they are.
I'm going to put the ones in the bag at the bottom, throw these on the top and then
let that project work its magic.
For the caftan and the kimono, their delicate wash is what I'm going to be using.
It's the second product that I bought from them and it's also just terrific.
What we're going to do is, I have their bins, you can use any kind of nice bin that
you buy.
I'm just going to squirt a good squirt of this product in both
of these.
Then what we're going to do is take them over the bathtub, put cold water in each of
these, put the dresses and give them a little bit of an agitation and then let them sit
for 30 minutes.
I'll show you that.
[Music]
We're going to take the things out of here, they're in their lovely little bags.
Let's see how this came out.
Here's that pretty Dior dress.
It looks great.
It's the right size still and everything.
And then the sweaters are all lovely.
One thing, because all of these are wool, it's like washing an animal because it came
from an animal, so they sort smell a little funny when you first get them out.
Don't let that scare you because as soon as they're dried, they smell terrific and
they look really great and they feel super good too.
We're going to take these now and let them air dry, definitely no dryer for any of this
stuff that you're doing by hand or in the wash, no dryer.
This is a drying rack that's fantastic.
It folds all the way down and you can keep it in a closet.
It is able to handle a lot of clothing.
I have these nice plastic hangers as well.
Here's what we're going to do, for the dress and this sweater that is not the kind
of knit that is going to be hurt by being hung up.
So, this one we're going to hand up.
I hang them up right next to the shower.
And the dress we're going to hang up.
[music] The sweaters, however, we're going to lay these flat on the rack.
We're going to lay them flat like this, put the arms in and these are going to turn
out so beautiful, I can't wait for you to see.
Here's this one.
[Music] Viola.
We are going to let those dry and by tomorrow they're going to be beautiful.
I'm going to brush them a little, I'll show you that when we get them all dry and
ready to go.
The timer went off, it's been more than 30 minutes, so let's find out what happened
to those.
What we're going to do is take them out of the bins and wash them up a little bit.
Take a peak here.
I think they're going to be fine.
There was a little bit of running, but I see that it hasn't gotten on the white.
I'm just hoping as we lift it up that it didn't run and that they came out good.
I have these nice white towels and I only use these towels for this purpose, for washing
and drying.
What we're going to do, I'm going to take these out, give them a good wash and then
we're going to lay the towel down on the floor, put the garment on that towel so that
it's going to soak up some of the water.
I'm going to roll it up really tightly and then it will be ready to put here with the
other hanging clothes.
So, let me do that now.
[Music] Okay, so here they are.
Everything is hanging up and drying.
I can see it all turned out really well.
My angst is gone.
There is no running that happened in this dress, it turned out really nicely.
The kimono is definitely going to take a lot of steaming, but again, this one definitely
needed, it had a moldy smell.
Now it looks and smells great.
What we're going to do is let this stuff dry, it's probably going to take overnight
for this and the sweaters to be completely dried.
Then, tomorrow we'll give them a good steam.
I'll show you that and the finished product.
Everything has now dried and it turned out really, really well.
I'm going to steam some of my things and show a couple of extra things I'm going
to do with the sweaters.
Here is my trust Jiffy steamer, which I really love.
I'm getting it all situated here.
You put in distilled water, you need to use distilled water with it.
I'm going to turn it on down here and we'll let it start to steam while I do some of the
other things.
If you see here, here are those three garments that I did.
This is the Dior knit, it turned out great.
I'm going to give it a little bit of a steam.
Here is the kimono which really turned out well.
It smells so nice.
I wish you could see how these things smell and feel, they smell really good.
This is going to be a little bit of a challenge to steam, but it still turned out great.
And then, I'm so happy with how my little Boho dress from the antique mall came out.
Nothing really ran and it stayed in great shape and all of the detailing is still there.
I'll show you how I give them just a little steam to make them perfect.
While the steamer is going, here are two of those sweaters that I told you about.
One here is a cashmere sweater and this one is just a regular one, but I think it has
a little bit of cashmere in it too.
This is a sweater comb and is especially one for cashmere and nicer knits.
If you have any pilling, I have a little bit of pilling here.
You just use this very lightly and go around it and it will get rid of all of that pilling,
it almost shaves it off.
It's really nice.
That's another thing that I do just to get any of the pilling, it almost shaves it off,
it's really nice.
Sometimes with older sweaters you get a lot of pilling.
It just comes off, you can see right here.
Nice and gentle with it and it takes it off.
This is the Laundress cashmere brush that I also love.
This lets you just give it a nice brushing.
Remember these all came animals, so it brushes it and makes it look beautiful.
I also use this sometimes when I have it on and wearing if I need to get some pieces off.
I'm going to give this one a little bit of a brush as well.
I'll probably just steam these a little bit too, just to make them perfect and they'll
be great.
So, let's go to the steamer.
The steamer is all ready to go.
We'll start with this dress first.
You always go underneath, under the fabric and just give it a good little steam all in
here.
But that's all I am going to do with this one.
Since this is also a knit, I'm take it and brush it with my trusty brush and we'll
show you that one at the very end.
There will be a big difference with this one.
Like I said, I'll work on it a little bit, I won't you bore you with the entire thing
and I'll show you at the end.
But, you'll see right away how this is going to start to really-- I have found that on
some of these silks that do take a bit of time to do, sometimes I'll take them to
the dry cleaner and just ask the dry cleaner to steam them instead of washing them.
But, sometimes I don't even trust that.
I will take a little bit of time here to steam it and show you at the end, but you can see
how all of that is going to come out really well.
Then, the last piece is this new dress, one of my new favs.
This will be super easy to steam.
Give it just a nice--just get some of the rough edges out of it.
Steam it all the way under.
This one won't take any time at all.
I'm going to mess around with these a little bit and I'll show when they all are done.
All finished.
I'm really happy with how it all turned out.
Going back in for some more great wearing.
This is all steamed now and, I think, looks really good.
It feels great, nice and soft.
It really didn't take that long, not as long as I thought.
It went pretty quickly and got all of the wrinkles and stuff out.
The dress is all steamed and brushed and ready for wear.
This is all steamed and ready to go and the sweaters are all done too.
That is how I wash my dry clean only clothes.
I hope you give it a try.
I would love to hear in the comments below if you do this too and any tips.
Or, if you're ready to try it, I'd love to hear how it turns out for you.
Thank you so much for watching and until next time, dress it up a little.
END OF RECORDING
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